Monday, October 31, 2011

Horny Herman Cain, fresh from trying to cover up a bimbo eruption at least has a little bit of good news. Kim Kardashian, or should I say, Kwim Kar-douche-ian has announced that she is filing for divorce. But she like tried really hard to make things work for like 72 days and stuff. As celebrity marriages go that's not even the shortest of marriage. Republicans have been in love with Herman Cain for about that long, but they are about to discover that Herman loves feeding his cheesy mozzarella to women he worked with at the National Restaurant Association, and then paying them five figure settlements of hush up money. Unfortunately, he'd probably have to pay the Kim-bo a little more than that to show her his 69-69-69 plan, but hey, as long as he's using someone else's money, I guess it doesn't matter.

Horny Herman is squirmin like a Weiner after first denying that knew about a settlement and then admitting that at least one woman who alleges she was sexually harrassed by him was paid a large sum of money. In the past 24 hours he has tried to discredit these reports, complaining that they are "anonymous", but the settlement included a "non-disclosure agreement", so Horny Herman knew full well that the accusers cannot come forward, according to the terms of the settlement. It looks like Horny Herman was pimping his pepperoni around the National Restaurant Association, and he eventually got his salami stuck in a tight little spot that he had to pay a five figure sum to get out of. Maybe he should have just gone to a hooker. It would have cost less.
He seems pretty desperate to make this go away. It smacks of the desperation we last saw from the former golden boy on the Left, Anthony Weiner.

Old Herman 999 Cain might want to change his 999 plan to 69-69-69. That is because it is being reported that two women received five-figure settlements after reporting sexually inappropriate conduct by Mr. 666 himself. Cain insists that you shouldn't believe any of it because the sources are anonymous, but he knows very well that these settlements often have confidentiality requirements that requires that the women not discuss what happened. That is precisely why they are paid the hush up money, and Cain is not fooling anyone by pretending to be ignorant of that fact. That he got the National Restaurant Association to serve up some pay offs his dalliances is mighty convenient and sure beats having to pay five figures a piece out of his own pocket. The only question is whether the five figure settlements were $66,666 or $99,999. Does anybody think that Cain's denials are starting to sound like a Republican version of Slick Willy Clinton? Just listen to Horny Herman say, "I didn't not have sexual relations with those women, Miss Lewinsky, or her co-worker...." That why he had them paid off. Gosh, Clinton should have thought of that. Where was the National Restaurant Association when he needed them.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

WTF is that THING on the side of his head toward the back? Also, it looks like there is something coming curved coming out of it. Now maybe he just effed up in shaving, or perhaps it is simply the scar left by his most recent lobotomy. However, since Halloween is almost upon us, I dare say that it also looks like it is in exactly the right spot for it to be a DEVIL HORN. Sheesh, some guys have all the luck. Cain doesn't even have to buy a mask or costume for Halloween, because he's scary looking enough all by himself. Perhaps they forgot to send this photo through the airbrushing and photoshopping process and the camera was a little bit too Candid about this this Candidate. It would appear that this is MORE EVIDENCE that Herman Cain is the Antichrist. At least it's more evidence than most people have had so far when they have made similar claims about virtually every major leader for the past few centuries. Not that I think that Herman Cain is going to get that far, but he certainly is frightening enough to make people want to throw candy at him to get him to go away.

I just want to emphasize this point because fanatic Christian M0r*ns insist that Halloween is the "Devil's Birthday". I would like to know who told them this? Where in the Bible does it say that October 31st is the birthday of Satan. Well, nowhere, of course. The Bible only has a handful of references to haSatan (the adversary), and none of them even come close to indicating that the "Devil" was born at all, much less a particular date. Furthermore, standard, extra-biblical tradition holds that Satan is a rebellious, fallen Angel. According to most Judeo-Christians, Angels are not born at all. They are created beings, just like Adam was created, rather than being born. Therefore it is a LIE and an incredibly STUPID LIE at that, that Halloween is the Devil's Birthday. It's perhaps the "silliest lie every told", since it's so easy to see that it's false.

As I noted already, if the Devil has a birthday, then this means that the Devil has a mother and a father. So who are these individuals? Why have we never heard specific names associated with them? Wouldn't that be one case where abortion would have been truly justified, by the way? How about that one, Right-to-Liars? Oh, and how could God not see that one coming? Surely he would have wanted to stop that little process and avoid all this hassle.

If angels have birthdays then, all-of-a-sudden, this opens up a whole bunch of new cans of worms. For example, when are all these birthdays? Wouldn't Christians presumably want to celebrate the birthdays of good angels, such as the Archangel Michael or Gabriel? Who are their mothers and fathers? In fact, what are their definite ages. If they have a specific birthday then they have an age. And what astrological sign does that make them? Astrology is actually endorsed in the Bible, BTW, at least in the case of the Christ child. Hasn't somebody received a "revelation" on this in the same way that someone must have had a "revelation" about the "Devil's Birthday"?

In any event, how many candles do they put on Lucifer's cake this year, and how do they get the candles to stop from melting in Hell. It's just so darned confusing once you go down the path of believing mythical nonsense.

Wouldn't it be easier to believe that the Devil is just a symbolic personification of evil, instead of a real entity. Isn't that easier to believe that there is this extremely busy, invisible man running around responsible for every misdeed of billions of people every single day? So how can a concept have a "birthday" anyway? If god existed for all time and he had a concept of what good is then, necessarily he also had a concept of what the opposite was, also for all time. So evil does not need a birthday, nor does it need a physical being to be responsible for all the evil acts that may occur.

Most non-insane Christians have no problem dressing up in scary costumes and trick-or-treating. Some even dress up like the devil, or a witch, which is just a way to have fun and playfully mock such things. However, insane Christian fanatics are not happy that the majority of Christians recognized Halloween as harmless fun. These are the same mean-spirited losers who have been literally screaming their heads off for the past couple years about the totally fake "WAR ON CHRISTMAS". These evil-hearted Evangelicals, aka EVILgelicals, have been waging a very real "WAR ON HALLOWEEN" for quite some time now.

Don't believe me? Look up something like "halloween is satanic" and google says, "2,340,000 results (0.08 seconds)". Most of the top searches are from idiots like the people at demonbuster.com or exposing satanism.org or the jeremiahproject.com, etc. They darkly warn that even things like "bobbing for apples" were used in pagan fertility rights. Yep, most single adults who are not losers go to halloween parties and have a few drinks and try to get lucky. Naturally, religious fanatics disapprove of such things.

They like to quote passages like 1 Thess 5:22, which the Queen James (yes, he was gay) Bible renders as "Abstain from all appearance of evil", because they want to twist the word appearance to mean something like a costume. However, modern translations, like the NIV render this simply, "reject every kind of evil". Indeed the context makes clear that they are saying nothing about how someone physically appears. Indeed the first few verses before say, "Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good". Right after this it says, "comma reject every kind of evil". So, no, it's not saying that you can't wear a scary costume.

Most of these anti-halloween propaganda pages play fast and loose with Bible verses, and are incredibly poorly researched. They declare, without the slightest evidence, that Halloween is the "Devil's Birthday". However, presumably the Devil was created, not born. Think about it. If the Devil had a birthday then the Devil had a mother and a father. By many traditional, extra-biblical accounts the Devil or haSatan (the enemy) is a fallen angel. That would mean that angels were having sex in Heaven and conceiving children.

So why have we never heard of this mother and father? Yet the Bible says that angels are essentially spirit beings who sometimes take physical form, as when Hebrews 1:14 says, "Are not all angels ministering spirits". This is yet one more example of the mindless nature of the anti-halloween, anti-fun fanaticism of EVILgelical Christians.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Evangelical Christians made an enormous production out of the phony claim that there was a "WAR ON CHRISTMAS". They screamed MERRY CHRISTMAS (motherbleeper) in the face of every Rabbi and Imam they could find. They were indignant and offended that Jews and Muslims did not celebrate THEIR holiday. They were even more enraged that atheists didn't acknowledge Christmas, or perhaps practice a secular version of gift giving with no need for the religious component. To them it was a personal attack and an attempt to destroy Christmas if even one person wasn't forced to participate in their holiday. Shop keepers who said "seasons greetings" or "happy holidays" were loudly confronted and told that they MUST say "Merry Christmas" or they would be labelled a "grinch" (by these Christian grinches aka Crinches) and boycotted.

However, now it appears that EVILgelicals have actually been waging a WAR ON HALLOWEEN, for some time now. Many fanatic Christians say it is the Devil's holiday, and that they could not possibly partake in such pagan rituals. Of course Yule logs and trees have always been pagan, but Christians don't seem to mind that about their holiday.

My question is why should fanatic Christians be given any more choice in celebrating Halloween than they give to others when they insist that Jews, Muslims, and all other non-Christians be COMPELLED to acknowledge the ChristMYTH holiday? Why shouldn't we seek out EVILgelicals and scream into their faces Happy Devil's Holiday (motherbleeper). Perhaps we should say, "I'll make a SATANIC sacrifice in YOUR honor", just as they do when they say, often say under their breath, "I'll PRAY for YOU, you filthy heathen!" Any salesperson who doesn't say "Happy Halloween" to you at the store should be loudly called out on it and denounced as anti-Halloween, just as extremist Christians did last Christmas. We should demand a complete refund on all our purchases and proclaim to everyone, "I will never shop at this anti-Halloween establishment again!" On this coming Halloween, let's make sure to TREAT Christians to a healthy dosage of TRICKING, shoving candy down their unwilling throats and demanding that celebrate a very HAPPY HALLOWEEN.

*Note for the mentally impaired. I am not entirely serious about this. I am simply illustrating how ridiculously extremist religious people behave. Therefore, if a person did one or two of these things in an ironic fashion, when one knows that a Christian fanatic is present, then it would potentially preempt some of the in-your-face ugliness of fanatic Christianity that is bound to be seen quite sincerely and sanctimoniously practiced by holier-than-thou Christians for the next couple months leading up to ChristMYTH.

When a criminal commits a crime we don't expect random spectators to say, "Suck it up, you whiners" or "You're just jealous of the criminal because he got away with it" or even "If you weren't so lazy then you could be a criminal too" and "you probably just want some of his loot". We would be even more surprised if someone said to a crime victim, "It was YOUR fault that the crime happened to you and if you failed to stop it then you deserve whatever you get." Yet this is exactly the sort of "logic" employed by right-wing apologists for Wall Street. They insist that anyone criticizing Wall Street must be a lazy, unemployed, "whiner" who is "jealous" and "looking for a handout".

Right-wing shills have now formed an organization called 53%, in response to the Occupy Wall Street who say they are part of the 99% of people who are not ultra-rich. The 53% allegedly refers to the amount of people who pay taxes in the US, since poor people end up getting a refund. However, this is based on the unevidenced assumption that nobody in the Occupy Wall Street movement pays any taxes. Where is their evidence for this claim? They have none. It is demonstrably false. They also assume that OWS protesters are all unemployed and receiving an unemployment check. This too is false. Many OWS protesters work part-time or low wage jobs to survive, but are still complaining about the criminal behavior of big banks and Wall Street investment firms who crashed our economy and created this recession.

Another typical canard of the 53% astroturf movement is to say that anyone complaining about the behavior of Wall Street lacks, "personal responsibility". They thump their chests about how they are "self-made" people, and that they are in 100% complete control of every facet of their lives. However, the reality is that this is usually a complete bluff. If most of these individuals were to lose his or her job then it would not be so easy for these people to find a job again, in the present economic circumstances. They believe that it would be easy, but that is based on how the job market was ten years ago, the last time they had to look. We all tend to over-estimate our abilities, but unless these people have actually gotten a job in the last six months to a year then they don't know what the hell they are talking about. Personal responsibility is an important component in life, but as we noted in the above example, an extremist over-emphasis on "personal responsibility" ends up with ridiculous results like saying that the rape victim was "asking for it" by wearing makeup and looking attractive.

The bottom line is that so-called 53%ers are full of misinformation, among other things. Many 99%ers are also part of the 53% who pay taxes. Many 99%ers are not collecting unemployment. Therefore these conservative blowhards have absolutely no right to attempt to censor the speech of the 99%ers. In fact they would not have this right even if all the 99%ers were unemployed and collecting government checks, which is not the case anyway. So don't buy their latest attempt to whitewash the actions of Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy. Many of the 53%ers are nowhere near rich themselves, anyway, and are therefore suffering from a form of cognitive dissonance commonly called "false consciousness", where people are conditioned, through propaganda, to not advocate for the very things that it would be in their interests to demand. They say that they don't want to see some long-haired hippie type getting "government handout", but they have no problem with rich people paying lobbyists to write special laws that give tax breaks and loophole deductions to wealthy corporations or people. They say they are "self-made" but they fail to realize that, without roads, bridges, public schools, state universities, libraries, post-offices, and fire departments that any of them would not have the resources to operate businesses, educate their children, or go to college themselves. And if they think taxes are too high, that's far more likely because the rich are gaming the system than because some poor person is getting a minimal payout from something like unemployment. That they are blind to the excesses of Wall Street shows how skewed their view of reality truly is.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

For a guy with a degree in math, Herman Cain has a remarkably poor grasp of elementary logic and the concept of contradiction. This is perhaps more evidence that Herman Cain is now possessed by the Devil and is therefore the Antichrist, since he displays no aptitude for his former ability to use mathematical reasoning. For example, Cain has claimed that, "Our Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state". Yet Cain sees no problem with publicly funding "prayer in schools", or giving them the ability to "display the Ten Commandments", and he wants to make sure that "under God" remains in the Pledge of Allegiance. He even has no problem with legislators being "sworn in" using the Holy Bible.

However, this apparent generosity does not extent to the Koran. He had a fit when Keith Ellison was sworn in as a member of Congress using the Koran. Furthermore, he thinks the people of Murfreesburo, Tennessee should be able to vote to ban construction of a Mosque. So much for wanting to get government off our backs, like he claims in his 999 plan. In fact, he told Chris Wallace, "That’s not discriminating based upon religion", though presumably, a community of Muslims voting to ban the construction of a Baptist church would be "crucifying Jesus all over again".

By the way, did you hear that Cain thinks that Liberals killed Jesus. Yep. He wrote in redstate.com that a, " liberal court found [Jesus] guilty of false offences [sic] and sentenced Him to death", even though liberals don't believe in capital punishment, and he acknowledges that Jesus "was not read any Miranda Rights". Where was the ACLU when Jesus needed them? Probably defending Barabbas or something. Oh, and it's also not discriminating on the basis of religion that Cain says that he would refuse to have any Muslims in his cabinet in the nightmare scenario of him actually becoming president.

You got all that. Good, because the Hermanator (yes, he actually calls himself that) is just getting started. If he were our president he would rack up more misstatements of fact and errors in logic in the first 100 days of office than George W. Bush achieved in 8 years. Perhaps the 999 in his plan is referring to his goal of reaching 999 contradictions by Christmas of this year. It think that's one plan that he's actually capable of implementing.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Herman Cain may finally start to be seen as the Antichrist that he is by Republicans, because he exposed the schizophrenic Big Lie that Republicans stand for small government when it comes to the topic of abortion. Now, you may be saying, of course Republicans are for small government. That's virtually every other word out of their mouth these days. Aside from abortion, it's almost all they have left of the empty shell that used to be so-called conservative ideology. Their small minds love to hate on big government precisely because it is too big for them to wrap their tiny minds around. .

Ah but Herman Cain managed to clusterf**k both issues at the same time when he infamously commented that, "it's not the government's role or anybody else's role to make that decision," when it comes to abortion, despite the fact that he claims to be personally opposed to abortion. That is, He Cain says, "My position is that I'm 100% pro-life. Period," and yet, when asked about whether a woman should be allowed to terminate a pregnancy then his "Period" turns into an ellipsis (i.e. "...") and he says, "That's her choice. That is not government's choice."

What's this? Pro-choice and Pro-life at the same time? But we've always been told that these positions are completely irreconcilable. Actually Cain is not the first person to suggest that you can be personally opposed to abortion, but not believe that the government should dictate this to others. A number of Democrats, such as Mario Cuomo, have made similar arguments.

Of course Cain is the only "small government" Republican out there today who thinks that it's not the governments role to regulate abortion. For that reason, every other Republican in the race, from "man-on-dog" Santorum, to Perry and Romney is jumping all over Cain about his apparent double standard.

Furthermore, it's not clear that Cain knows what side of his mouth he is talking out of at a given time, because in the same interview he also stated, "No, abortion should not be legal." But I thought it wasn't government's role and how would it be made illegal without the government? Apparently here he is trying to weasel words and suggest that there "should" be a law, hypothetically, but that, in the actual world we live in, government's role is not to dictate that. That's the only way I can begin to make sense of his otherwise incoherent set of statements.

Consider the example of freedom of speech. A religious person might claim that blasphemy is "wrong" and that it "should be illegal" but that our current, Constitutional form of government guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion, so it is not the government's role to make these kinds of laws and/or choices for people.

Unfortunately for Mr. Cain, Republicans "don't do nuance". That's why simple-minded things like the 999 plan appealed to them so much. To now give them a complicated word game about how you're pro-life, but also pro-choice, and that you think that it "should" be illegal in principle in a perfect world, but that, in the present, imperfect world, government can't actually do it, would be enough to make 99% of Republicans heads explode.

However, that might be exactly what Cain wants as the Antichrist. With most Republicans neutralized it will be relatively easy for him to beat up on the hippie peacenik liberals and wishy-washy "independents" who are left.

Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh say that extreme progress has been made in animal-to-human transplantation (xenotransplantation) in the last decade and that we may be on the verge of being able to transplant genetically modified pig organs and tissues into human beings. The reason we would want to do this would be to alleviate the extreme shortages of donor organs, ranging from corneas all the way up to things like hearts, and livers. Using special genetic techniques, pigs can be crossbred with human genes, so that their organs would resist attacks by the human immune system. Hearts from pigs, for examples, have already been transplanted into non-human primate test subjects and have survived for eight months. Therefore, human trials of these organs may not be far off.

Furthermore, other pig tissues, such as pancreatic cells, are showing even more promise. Islet cells from pigs have been used to successfully keep a diabetic monkey alive for one year without the use of conventional medication. Other pig tissues, such as neuronal cells and blood vessels, for example, also show extreme promise for treating diseases such as Parkinsons and Cardiovascular disease respectively.

Unfortunately, many religious extremists and culture warriors of the far-right deride the notion of "Playing God" by monkeying around with human genes. Some people may remember as far back as 2006, when ex- president George W. Bush spoke about the need to ban "human-animal hybrids" in his State of the Union address. Far right-wingnuts like Senator Samuel Brownback, who is also an embryonic and stem cell research opponent, introduced failed legislation to do that at the federal level in 2009. However, since then various state legislatures, including Arizona and Ohio have passed laws banning this research in their backwards, small-minded states.

The question that I want to take up is the biblical correctness, in particular, of using swine derived materials in the human body. For example, both Jews and Muslims consider the pig to be a ritually unclean animal and their religious laws forbid them from consuming foods containing pork. Therefore, presumably, observant individuals from these faiths would rather die that receive life-sustaining transplants from an animal that would permanently make them unclean.

However, it is not entirely clear that extremist Christians would fare much better. Brownback, for example, is a Christian, and is still opposed to this kind of research, in general, so it is not clear that someone of his persuasion could accept transplants from this source. Furthermore, Christians often claim to follow Biblical Law, or Torah, including many parts of the Old Testament.

There are a number of items in Old Testament law which would be at odds with this kind of transplantation. Leviticus 7:27, for example, forbids even consuming animal blood, much less having an animal organ inside one's body as a blood vessel or as a blood pump. Bible literalists claim to believe that every word of the Bible is literally true and Leviticus 3:17 says that its laws are "forever throughout the generations", so it's not clear that Bible-believing Christians can get around this with the same facility by which they deny the need for dietary laws. Modern Christians claim that they are under a "New Covenant" and therefore not subject to some of these Old Covenant laws. However, when asked why homosexuality is wrong, for example, they cite Old Testament laws from the very same books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy that they say "no longer apply".

Some Christians rely on verses like Matthew 15:17-18 where Jesus says, "Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these defile them." However, a transplanted organ would not pass through the body and out of it. One would be permanently part pig.

Jesus says that things that come from the heart make you defiled or unclean, so one wonders about the effect of having a pig's heart instead of one's original, human heart. Naturally, these same people will probably insist that Jesus is speaking "metaphorically" about the heart and not literally. However, that would mean that we can't take the Bible "LITERALLY", as many fundamentalists insist that they to do. Either that, or they will have to become like Jehovah's Witnesses and refuse these medical procedures in order to keep the letter of the law as stated not only by the Old Testament, but by Jesus himself.

Friday, October 21, 2011

The third time was not a charm for Harold Camping, dubbed the NostraDumbA$$ False Prophet of 2011, who had predicted that the world would end today, after having notably failed to predict the Christian Rapture back on May 21st, 2011. He had also previously predicted the world would end on September 7th, 1994. However, NostraDumbA$$ may be laughing all the way to the bank, having raised $100 million of his follwers money to advertise the failed May 21st apocalypse, and another $80 million in donations between 2004-2009 on behalf of his "Family Radio". Thus, Mr. Camping has managed to blow through $180 million dollars of his followers money, all based upon laughably bad preaching and predictions that seem to have no grounding in reality. What do you want to bet that this charlatan will try for a fourth or a fifth time. After all, the man is 90 years old. What does he have to lose besides other people's money?

Thursday, October 20, 2011

You may recall that the NostraDumbAss False Prophet of 2011, Harold Camping, proved that he was totally full of cRapture, when he predicted that the long-awaited Christian Rapture, would occur on May 21st, 2011. Of course that date came and went, so NostraDumbAss did a Bible Backstroke, and claimed that the world ended in a "spiritual sense" back in May, but that it would end in a physical sense in October 21st of this year. Interestingly, this remarkably bad prophet was able to do a backstroke, but was unable to predict his own real stroke a month later. And this is not the first time that Harold Camping has wrongly predicted the end of the world.
Given his total record of failure, and the 0% success rate of apocalypse predicters, in general, there is excellent reason to believe that he will continue to have a 0% success rate tomorrow, on October 21st, the new and improved date that he predicted the world would actually end. I would advise that you don't sell your house or spend your life savings this time like the NostraDipSh1ts who gave Harold Camping and his Family Radio $100 million to advertise the end of the world back in May. God knows that is the safest bet you'll find anywhere in the universe tomorrow.

Libyan psychopath Moammar Gadhafi, the sponsor of the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie Bombing, as well as numerous other terrorist activities, has reportedly been shot and killed in his home town of Sirte, according to rebel fighters. Gadhafi was known for his ridiculous dress, bizarre behaviors, superstitious phobias, and other foibles. He seemed to have a particular fondness for blonde, voluptuous Ukranian nurses and female body guards, for example, but those were perhaps the only normal things about him.

He had held dictatorial power over the Libyan nation for 42 years, since the former Colonel seized power in a coup in 1969. He used various titiles, such as "Brother Leader" and "Guide to the Revolution". However, he was most remembers as a repressive religious lunatic, naming one of his sons Saif al Islam, or "the Sword of Islam". The Libyan people and the world in general are much improved by his untimely, but long over due demise.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

John McCain, not to be confused with Herman 666 Cain, told media that Obama has an "ugly" tour bus. Obama was quoted as replying to McCain, "Yeah, well you have ugly FACE, biatch!" and followed it up by "That's why I effed you like a $5 hoe in the last election." No, actually Obama didn't say that, because that would have proven that he still had at least one ball between his legs. However, perhaps if Obama would fire all his political advisors and hire someone who knows what the eff he is doing, like yours truly, then he will end up spanking Herman "antichrist" Cain just as badly as he spanked John McCain and that real $5 hoe, Sarah P.

Herman Cain said he was just "joking" about an electric fence on the border to keep out Mexicans. However, within 24 hours he has FLIP FLOPPED and now says he thinks it's a pretty darn good idea. Later when questioned about what he was going to have for breakfast he said he would have waffles, and then changed his mind to flap jacks with eggs flipped over and over and over again. According to the candidate for FLOPPER-in CHIEF he said, "It WAS a joketo the extent in the context of the views of that speech, butin terms of what we need to do, I fully intend to do so." Of course, this is par for the couse for Cain who had announced that he was going to drop out of the presidential campaign in order to do a book tour just before his numbers started to go up in the polls. Now he figures he can make more money by shaking down GOP suckers for campaign contributions than he ever could by pimping some lame, inarticulately written book, which will end up being recycled for toilet paper in a years time anyway, if it's even any good for that.

According to a new AP report, people making $10,000 to $20,000 per year would see their taxes go up 950% under Herman Cain's Satanic 999 Plan. People in middle incomes between $40000 and $75000 per year would see their tax bills increase by over $4000 per year. In all, 84% of current tax payers would see an increase in their taxes. However, guess which group would benefit. Yep, you guessed it, the ultra wealthy. They would pay far less in taxes than they do today. "Well Surprise, Surprise!", as a person with the biblical name Gomer used to say. That's because Cain's Welfare for the Rich plan makes sure to exempt investment income from being taxed at all. You can't get more anti-Christian than increasing the tax burden by 950% on the poor, while lowering them for the rich. But what do you expect from Antichrist Herman Cain.

Herman Cain's 999 Plan really reads 666 because CAIN has his head up his A$$ and that's what it looks like to him. More proof of this is his utterly moronic and blasphemous revisionism of history as when he wrote in Redstate.com that a " liberal court found [Jesus] guilty of false offences [sic] and sentenced Him to death". Apparently, this certifiable retard, Herman Cain, has forgotten that LIBERALS OPPOSE CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. Conservatives SUPPORT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. So a LIBERAL COURT would not IMPOSE THE DEATH PENALTY. A CONSERVATIVE court would SENTENCE JESUS TO CRUCIFIXION for blasphemy. Liberals would have considered CRUCIFIXION as CRUEL AND/OR UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT and they support freedom of speech and freedom of religion, so they would not have considered blasphemy even against the law. A Liberal court would have had Jesus out on parole in five minutes.

Cain then continued to demolish his ridiculous case by noting that Jesus, "was not read any Miranda Rights". A liberal court would have THROWN OUT THE CHARGES. A conservative court would not care if Jesus was beaten and tortured. Cain then notes that Jesus "didn’t have a lawyer". Again, this would have been a violation of Miranda and would have been GROUNDS FOR ACQUITTAL in a LIBERAL COURT. In a conservative court they would have said, if you're "not rich, blame yourself" for not being able to afford a laywer. In fact, that's also a direct quote from a total dumbf**k conservative named HERMAN CAIN. A liberal court would have appointed him a public defender.

Cain's article mercilessly makes a fool of himself on every level, and is extremely blasphemous. He claims, for example, that Jesus "was unemployed". However, in reality Jesus was working hard every day as a preacher and a healer of the sick. That is not being "unemployed". He claims that Jesus helped the poor "without one government program", but actually Jesus was a member of the BIGGEST GOVERNMENT IN THE UNIVERSE called the KINGDOM OF GOD. How is a KINGDOM not a government? In fact, He was the head of that government and used His influence to get His Father to multiply fish and loaves and to give people free government health care without having to pay for it, like CONSERVATIVES DEMAND.

Jesus spoke very disapprovingly of the rich, saying, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Mt 19:24). Cain says that poor people are just lazy and jealous. Since when did Jesus teach that you should never help poor people because they are just lazy and jealous.

Cain thinks Jesus was a "perfect conservative". However, I don't recall Jesus preaching that you should carry firearms and retaliate instantly if anyone offended you. In fact, Jesus was very much for "sword control". For example, when he was being arrested Simon Peter drew a sword and cut off the ear of the servant of the High Priest. Did Jesus say, "Yeehaw, boy, get 'er done! Go kill all those mofos trying to arrest me!" No, not exactly. Not even close. That's what a conservative like Cain would have said. Instead he bitterly rebuked Simon Peter saying "Put your sword back in its place", and that "all who draw the sword will die by the sword". He then healed the ear of the servant of the High Priest. Contrary to popular belief and revisionism Jesus was not a fan of violence or armed rebellion. He taught pacifism and loving your enemy. That's what those peacenik, pinko, liberals believe in. Sorry Cain, but you are a false prophet preaching a false christ as Mk 13:21 warned about. This is yet more evidence that HERMAN CAIN IS THE ANTICHRIST.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Herman 666 Cain is now claiming he was joking when he suggested that we should build an electric fence on the border to control immigration. Of course, any fence that keeps people OUT also locks them IN, which might be the actual reason he favors such a fence, since Cain doesn't want us fleeing to Mexico when he reveals himself as the Antichrist. Just like the previous Evil Empire, the Soviet Union, Cain seems to want to build an electrified version of the Iron Curtain to control the American populace. I also suspect that, if one looked carefully at the chain link pattern on that fence that touching it would brand 666 onto the skin of anyone who came into contact with it. I suspect that Cain would like to restart slavery, but this time for all Americans. Why else would he be planning this sort of prison state, big government, big brother scheme.

Naturally, such a fence is moronic, especially with constant news of smugglers tunnelling under existing fences. Electric fences are very old and very bad technology. It would certainly fry a lot of tumbleweeds and jack rabbits, etc. However, it is unlikely that it would present much obstruction to a human who understands how to use an insulated fiberglass ladder to cross it harmlessly, or how to use an electrical conductor to short it out. The reason these things are not widespread is because they don't work.

So now Cain says he was just joking. Apparently he thinks that his race makes him immune from charges of racism when joking about other minorities, like Mexican Americans. Perhaps what he is really afraid of is that Mexican immigrants tend to be highly religious, and therefore, as Satan incarnate, he wants to keep as many of them out as possible, by any means necessary.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

R. Albert Mohler is famous for his ignorant statements, such as when he told Jewish Congressman Weiner that "atonement is found only in Jesus Christ", seemingly oblivious to Jewish observances such as the Day of Atonement, otherwise known as Yom Kippur. Now CNN is giving this sloppy thinker a preaching platform by asking him, as an evangelical Christian, to write an opinion piece called, "Are Evangelicals Dangerous?" Gee I wonder what he will say. He starts with the typical spoiled brat whining that almost all fanatic Christians indulge in because of an utter inability to tolerate the slightest criticism or admit the tiniest of errors.

His first target is to attack those who criticize the lunatic extremism of Michele Bachmann, whose "clinic" performs pseudoscientific "deGAYification" therapy, as but one example of her extremism. He complains that she is being criticized for having a "worldview", but, in his typically shallow fashion, he fails to understand that the problem is not simply that she has a "Christian worldview" but that it is an EXTREME and archaic worldview, cultivated at cultish "Bible Colleges", that even many mainstream Christians reject.

Fresh from that utterly inane and failed defense, he next springs to defending Rick Perry's ignorant rejection of Evolution, contrasting him with Cambridge Biology Professor Richard Dawkins who makes equally vehement assertions that evolution is a fact. Of course the false equivalence between an ignorant, pandering pol like Perry, with no expertise on the subject, and a world-renowned science writer and researcher like Dawkins, who had written many scholarly books examining the evidence for evolution, is laughably absurd. Mohler wants you to think that the two "opinions" should be given equal weight, when Dawkins is the biology expert and Perry has a kindergarten level of command of the science.

He finally tries to clench it by complaining that Penn Jillette was given a forum in the LA Times to write about his atheistic views. I suspect that was part of his sales pitch to get CNN to give him equal and opposite time. However, asking him to write an opinion piece about whether evangelicals are dangerous is about, as the metaphor goes, like asking two foxes and a chicken to vote on what's for dinner.

At that point he just starts a preaching tirade about how single-celled organisms, like a zygote, should be given the same rights as fully-grown human beings, because they are "made in the image of God", and other such stupidity. He ignores the real evidence about evangelicals, including Bachmann, Angle, Robertson, Eric Rudolph, Randall Terry, the Hutaree Militia, etc who have called for violence and the imposition of theocracy, and asks us to believe his unevidenced assertion that evangelicals don't want theocracy.

Sorry, but I don't buy it. Just because Mohler is too much of a puss to engage in a fist fight doesn't mean that the lunatic fringe in the churches, who murder abortion doctors, and try to intimidate all non-Christians into silence are not a threat. Your case was very poorly made, sir, just like your case for Christianity, in general.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Harold Camping, annointed the 2011 Nostradumbass False Prophet of the Year, for his failed prediction that the world was going to end on May 21st of this year, later did a Bible Backstoke and claimed that the world ended in a "spiritual sense". However, Nostradumbass also claimed that the ACTUAL "non-spiritual" end of the world would be October 21st. Of course this same prescient individual failed to predict his own stroke a month later. Yet, he is reportedly still sticking to his revised timeline, claiming, that, this time, the world will end quietly, with a whimper, rather than a bang. People lost their life savings believing Harold Camping last time. Some people reportedly even committed suicide in anticipation. My question is who wants to wager even 5 cents that this demented lunatic could possibly be right this time. The unfortunate answer is that there are a couple stupid bible-beaters who still listen to "Family Radio" who are too clueless to have figured out that this guy is a collosal fraud.

Anyway, why would this indicate that Herman Cain is the Antichrist, you may ask? Well Matthew 24:24, for starters says, "For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect--if that were possible." Perhaps the greatest miracle that Cain has performed so far is to come from the bottom of the pack all the way to the top, and now he announces that he wants to seduce away Christians. But there's more.

Here's what Herman Antichrist Cain says of his faith. "You know, I don't wear my Christian faith, which has been my faith since I was 10 years old, on my forehead". I bet he doesn't. What a curious expression, when the normal expression is "on my sleeve". Gosh, where have I heard an expression like that before? Oh yeah, Revelation 18:16, which says the Beast forces, "all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands OR ON THEIR FOREHEAD". That's what Cain wears on his forehead, his 999 plan, and when he stands on his head to commune with his father, the Devil, it reads 666.

Gee, if Cain has been a sincere "Christian" since he was 10 years old then surely he would have recognized the numerological significance of his 999 Plan. Either he's not a very knowledgeable Christian, in which case he shouldn't be claiming to be one to lure Perry's voters away, or he knows exactly what he is doing, in which case people better beware.

Of course, a small, small, small group of people have started to figure out that Cain's plan to turn the economy upside down with his 999 plan, will result in 999 turning into 666. We've also already noted the fact that traditionally the Antichrist has been depicted in Christian artwork with a black face. That was used against Obama already by the paranoid. We should also already know that Cain was the first murderer in the Bible and that he was marked with the Mark of Cain, which we now know apparently is 999. By the way, do you know what the name "Cain" means in Hebrew? It means "HERE HE IS". Yep, he sure is.

Hopefully people have also figured out that this sales "TAX" would apply to anyone who buys or sells, just as it says in Rev 13:17, which says, "they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark". Only this "TAX" will cost you more than 9% of your income and 9% of your purchase price. It will cost you your soul.

Just to be on the safe side, I've got a recommendation for you all. Anybody but Cain. Aren't you sheep going to at least try to resist, or will you give up without a fight?

Friday, October 14, 2011

It's interesting that, since Herman Cain has come out with his 999 plan, only a tiny number of Christians seem to be concerned about this being the Mark of the Beast. It's also interesting, that historically, Satan and the Antichrist have been depicted in Medieval Christian art with a dark or black complexion. Of course, this was used against Obama, but it seems to apply more aptly to Cain, since he is the one using a variant of 666 in his central campaign pledge. Republican were absolutely convinced that Obama was the Antichrist on the basis of complexion alone. Yet they are falling all over themselves to embrace Herman Cain who far better matches descriptions of the Antichrist with his arrogant, blasphemous speech and his unshakable faith in money, rather than God, as the savior of Mankind.

Herman "The Beast" Cain has effected an almost supernatural, come from behind surge in the GOP polls, with the adoption of his Satanic 999 Plan, that he wants to stamp on the hands and foreheads of anyone who votes for him. Of course it is just a thinly veiled version of 666, turned on its head so that right wingers will be too dumb to see it. Most of them aren't exactly the sharpest tacks, but even a few of them have started to catch on to something as obvious as this. Revelation 13:1 says of the AntiChrist, "upon his head is the name of blasphemy". Think about it. He was the "head" (CEO) of GodFather's Pizza. Could it not be considered blasphemy to use the name of God the Father together with selling Pizza? Decide that one for yourself.

GOP fading star Rick Perry is now making the all too frequently heard whining noises that he is being persecuted for his Christian beliefs. I mean, obviously there could be no other explanation for his poor performance in the polls, except perhaps his inability to complete a logically coherent sentence.

Oh poor little martyr. Here's a cross and some nails. I'm sure there would be no shortage of volunteers to help attach you. This is about as believable as a Muslim in the Middle East claiming to be persecuted for his or her Islamic beliefs. The fact is that Perry was busy slamming Romney over his Mormon beliefs, and apparently his criticisms of Mormonism were perceived, even by Republicans, as an unfair attack on that man's religion. So for Perry to now try to turn the tables and say that he is being persecuted for his bigoted attacks on Mormonism really seems surreal.

Not that I would waste even a syllable defending the many ridiculous, transparently fraudulent, and utterly laughable "beliefs" of Mormonism. Few people who were not indoctrinated since birth in that religion can find the Book of Mormon even remotely plausible, or even readable. Perhaps that's why Mark Twain referred to the Book of Mormon as "Chloroform in print" (and, no I don't think he meant that in a good way, FYI).

Sorry, poor little Richie Rich, apparently GOP voters like Satanic Herman Cain and his Mark of the Beast 999 Tax plan more than they like you. If you want to blame someone for being tired of your fundamentalist claptrap, perhaps you should start with GOP voters, since there are apparently willing to vote for a guy with 999 stamped on his forehead before they are willing to pull the lever for you. However, the good news is that this should usher in the end of the world any day now and then you all can be with Jebus on a cloud somewhere.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Republicans voters are on the horns (literally) of a dilemma. Cain and Romney are tied., according to the latest poll. Who will they vote for, someone who trots out his Satanic Mark of the Beast 999 tax plan, or a plastic haired Mormon who believes that God lives on the planet Kolob and probably has a secret harem larger than Warren Jeffs? One wonders what the fundamentalist Christians must be thinking when Rick Perry, the only actual "washed in the blood" Bible (il)Literalist of the bunch, is only polling at 9%. If this is not proof that Republicans would sell their souls (again literally) because of their hatred of Obama then what is? Imagine if Barack Obama had trotted out a plan like the 666 Universal Healthcare Plan? I doubt that would put him at the top of GOP polls like it has with Cain.

An unnamed 25-year-old woman, who is reportedly one of 85 wives of convicted child molester Warren Jeffs, has escaped from an isolated Arizona compound run by the Fundamentalist LDS (uberMormon) church and is now in Phoenix. Jeffs, you may recall, was in a coma from a three-day hunger strike in prison, where he is serving a life sentence. However, unfortunately, Jeffs has reportedly recovered from his hunger strike after several weeks in the hospital and therefore, most regrettably, is still be housed at taxpayer expense.

Apparently, even a cult which brainwashes women since birth and blackmails them with family pressure, cannot convince all 85 of these women to remain part of Jeffs harem. The notion that 85 separate women would want to each have a 1/85th share of a husband, no matter how good he might be is laughable. If one adds the extremely meager physical and mental qualities that Jeffs possesses into the mix then it is clear that these women are virtual slaves. However, many of them are imprisoned mentally perhaps even more than they are imprisoned physically and through social control. Mental prisons are sometimes the most difficult from which to escape, though apparently this one woman has managed to do so and is undergoing counseling.

GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, also a Mormon, had no comment on whether he would be choosing Jeffs as a potential running mate. Naturally, Romney, like many Mormons today, claim to belong to a sanitized version of the Mormon church which does not OFFICIALLY allow multiple marriages (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). If Mitt were to become president, perhaps this woman could become the 85th First Lady. However, one wonders how Mitt would run the country and still have time for his 85 wives. One wonders how any many could have time to do anything with 85 women to please. One is often hard enough.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Herman Cain is proposing an overhaul of the American tax system that he calls the 999 Plan. If this sounds like a pizza promotional, well, what do you expect from the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza? Please hold the jokes about the whether the plan comes with extra toppings, garlic bread, and a large drink. However, other people are a little more concerned about the potentially sinister numerical significance. 999 is considered by many to be a variant of 666, which has traditionally been called the "mark of the beast", at least according to conventional biblical translations of Revelation 13:18, which say, "Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number [is] Six hundred threescore [and] six". This is supposedly the number or seal used by the Antichrist to mark himself and all those who cooperate with him.

Interestingly, verse one of Revelation 13 also may apply to Cain, because it says, in part, "upon his head is the name of blasphemy". Well, Cain, as you will recall was the murderous brother of Abel, and the biblical Cain was given the Mark of Cain, as per Genesis 4:15. The name Cain might therefore be considered blasphemous in itself, since it is the name of the first murderer who rebelled against Yahweh.

Of course, Herman Cain says it's just his flat tax rate proposal where each individual would pay 9% income tax, corporations would pay 9%, and there would be a 9% sales tax. As the link above notes, this would absolutely wallop the poor, because he wants to make it so that everyone has to pay it and many poor people end up paying no income tax after deductions. Furthermore, this 9% federal sales tax would be on top of the sales taxes charged by many states. In fact there are also some cities that charge sales tax. So people could end up being charged state, federal, and municipal sales tax on a purchase. Naturally, wage earners on the bottom rungs would take the largest hit from this because they usually spend all of their incomes on necessities like food, gas, etc.

So even if Cain's 999 plan is not a satanic conspiracy, making Herman Cain the Antichrist, it would be extremely bad for anyone but the richest of the rich. Cain has made it very clear, from day 1 that the super-rich are the only people he cares about. That's why his 999 plan shields all investor income. Jesus spoke of helping the poor. Cain is the antithesis of Jesus in that he only cares about helping the rich.

Note: I am NOT saying that I take Revelation 13:18 seriously, or that I believe that it is an authentic prophecy. Many serious students of Christian theology have concluded that the 666 reference, which is alternately 616 in some of the oldest translations, was a likely reference to the Roman emperor Nero, who was well known for his persecution of the early Christian church. Nero, if the tales of his actions were true, would fit the bill as an "Antichrist", in the sense of being anti-Christian, far better than many of the people who have been labeled possible antichrists over the intervening centuries and millennia since this prophecy has gone unfulfilled.

In modern times, people have come up with all kinds of fanciful conspiracy theories, claim that 666 shows up in barcodes, or that these digits will be embedded in chips which are implanted inside of people as an alternative to money.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Venture Capitalist Peter Thiel, one of the co-founders of Paypal, has recently written an article in the _National Review_ called _The End of the Future_. I have waited in vain since October 3rd for someone of any stature to write an intelligent rebuttal to any of the the many flaws in the article. Now granted, the fact that it appeared in the _National Review_ -- Peter Thiel is a Libertarian, after all -- might cause many serious thinkers to dismiss it out of hand. Some may also dismiss Peter Thiel himself, since his last cause celebre was to promote the idea that college is a waste of time and that people should drop out of their Ivy League schools and go right into business, like him. Well, actually, not quite like him because he didn't drop out. In any event, I expected that at least one or two of the better known people on the opposite polar extreme from Thiel, like Ray Kurzweil, for example, might be moved to take up the mantle. However, there has been no such luck.

Therefore, feeling I can wait no longer, it falls to me to point out at least a few serious deficiencies in Thiel's arguments. BTW, some people may also be wondering why I would take this up in a blog about religion. Well, as it turns out, Thiel started his article quoting Revelation 6:5. That might give you yet another indication of the type of "science and technology article" that Thiel produced. Search as one might, the reader will find little indication of how this quote is relevant to anything in the article, except perhaps in the sense that both Thiel and John of Patmos are both producing dire, dream-like visions of the future that have no bearing on reality and equally little chance of coming true.

In the interests of fairness, let me start by noting those areas where I can agree with Thiel. I agree that technological progress is a vital element in our economy, although I would say this applies worldwide, and not just to Western nations as Thiel seems to suggest. I also agree that, in some areas, progress has seemed maddeningly slow, and that we should do what we can, especially in the midst of the current recession, to jump-start progress on a number of fronts. I suspect, however, that he would not be as enthusiastic about the government taking a significant role in this jump-starting, even though they have often been vital in starting many nascent industries from computing to aerospace and solar. For what it's worth, Thiel does concede that programs like the Manhattan Project were examples of successful government operations, but this will likely be greeted as heresy by average National Review reader. However, I very much agree that we cannot be naively optimistic that technology will always save our bacon, especially if we stay our current course of doing less and less research and development.

Having said where I can agree with Thiel, however, the basic premise of his opinion piece is that progress is grinding to a halt because some of the fanciful expectations of previous decades have not come true. For example, his first real piece of evidence, after lamenting the demise of the Concorde, is to cite a 1964 Popular Science article called "Who’ll Fly You at 2,000 m.p.h.?". According to Thiel's technological Jeremiad, if this kind of thing hasn't come to pass then it means that progress has halted.

Well, in actual fact, planes like the SR-71 Blackbird have routinely flown faster than 2000 mph and the Blackbird was first produced in 1966. Also, more recently, Virgin Galactic has been offering commercial rides aboard Spaceship One, which flew at Mach 3.09 (2373 mph) in a test run in 2004. I could go on talking about Nasa's X-43 scramjet that flies at 7000 mph, but I think the point has been made that Thiel is being too casual with the facts.

Sure, only Spaceship One is designed for commercial passengers, and you have to pay $200 grand for a thirty minute ride into space. Thiel acknowledges that a lot of this is driven by economics, like the price of fuel. However, that leads him to his next lament, which he describes as "the much larger failure in energy innovation". He notes that inflation adjusted gasoline prices are arguably around the same level or higher than under the Carter Administration, and also notes that Nixon called for Energy Independence back in 1974. Of course he conveniently omits that it was not Carter, but Reagan and Bush, his ideological bedfellows, who slammed the brakes on moving toward solar and other renewables as significant energy sources in the US.

Besides, it needs to be acknowledged that it is more energy efficient to use technologies like video conferencing instead trying to fly people at 2000 mph to get to a meeting, in the first place. That is energy innovation, contrary to what he or Dick Cheney might say about conservation not being a sound basis for energy policy. A key to any type of sound energy policy is doing the easiest and most economical thing, which is often finding ways to save energy, as opposed to building a $10 billion nuclear power plant.

Thiel, of course, doesn't see these more efficient uses of energy for the innovations that they are. We don't all have to travel at 2000 mph, because we instead virtually travel at the speed of light to talk to people via video chat around the world. He later goes on to acknowledge that the one area where he sees any progress at all is in computing, but the reader will notice that he is bundling telecommunications and electronics under the general category of computing. I know that people tend to think of iPhones as pocket computers these days, and forget that phones did not always used to be miniature computers, or that many electronic devices do many things other than computations. Gene sequencing machines and MRIs certainly use computers, but they are also sensors that collect increasingly fine levels of details to feed into computer databases. Progress in telecommunication and electronic sensing is not on Thiel's radar screen, apparently -- or perhaps he would just prefer to cherry pick the data to see it in the most negative light possible.

Going on, Thiel assigns to environmentalists much of the blame for the stagnation of nuclear power, but fails to acknowledge that the technology itself is far more expensive and unreliable than the industry optimistically predicted when it foresaw "energy too cheap to meter". The fact that industry got their cost estimates wrong by a factor of 10 or 20 back in the 1950's does not mean that technology has slowed down. It means that they over-estimated where technology actually was in the first place.

Just to recap more generally, the fact that someone made a bogus prediction in the past and this prediction fails to materialize does not show that technology has somehow failed to keep pace. Thousands of products are hyped every year in the popular press and many of them turn out to be "vaporware", or products that were too-good-to-be-true and simply cannot be delivered as advertised. This might be a failure of over-ambitious marketers, but it not really the fault of technology developers when others promise things that can't really be done yet. Comic books promised us our Dick Tracy TV-phone wristwatches more than half a century before it actually became practical to build them. It's easy to imagine things that are very hard to do technologically.

So sure, we desperately need new technologies, and, to return to the previous topic, there have been a number of innovative designs for reactors since commercial nuclear power reached its apex in the early 1970s, in the US. However, there are still fundamental reasons that we do not have nuclear powered planes or rockets that have nothing to do with "hippies" or other assorted environmental protester bogeymen. For example, even if we could miniaturize a nuclear power plant to be light enough to power a 747, fundamental properties of physics say that it would still emit a huge amount of radiation and it's not as simple as some might think to shield the passengers from this. Even if you put a thick lead wall directly between the reactor and the passengers, the radiation would bounce out through the sides of the plane and hit atoms in the air which would deflect it back around the lead wall and into the passenger cabin, cooking your customers. The phenomenon is know as "backscatter radiation" and it is the basis of some of our airport screening devices today.

The last thing I would like to note in Part 1 of this commentary on the Thiel article is the way that sloppy thinking and off-hand references pervade and detract from the general reliability of the article. Right at the very beginning, he makes an almost obligatory sop to the "the soft totalitarianism of political correctness" , and yet, being that Thiel is a gay man, one wonders if he would prefer the much harder totalitarianism of his right-wing fellow travellers who think that "God hates f*gs" and that people like him should be stoned to death. How would thinking like that be conducive to innovation? In fact quite the opposite is true. In his well known book, _The Rise of the Creative Class_, Richard Florida argues that those cities and states which are more tolerant and politically progressive are also the places where you see the most technological progress, such as Silicon Valley or the Bay Area.

As yet one more example of sloppy thinking, Thiel inquires into what might be wrong with "The state of true science" that might be responsible for progress running a bit less quickly than he and others may prefer. However, he gives up almost immediately, noting that no person can comprehend all the complexities of the numerous scientific disciplines today, and lamenting, in an almost Jobian fashion, "who can compare and contrast and properly weight the rate of progress in nanotechnology and cryptography and superstring theory and 610 other disciplines".

Who indeed? I thought he was talking about science, but he has included cryptography, which is not generally regarded as an empirical science, and nanoTECHNOLOGY which, as the name implies, is a technology, as opposed to nano-science. Furthermore, why should we assume that one person needs to have superhuman mastery of all of these fields in detail? Instead, professionals in fields like Management of Technology try to use general principles, like diffusion of innovation, or product development cycles, rather than an encyclopedic knowledge of facts and figures to get a handle on the complexities of technology.

Thiel clearly didn't consult anyone in Management of Technology before writing the article, and one marvels that he calls himself a venture capitalist with this level of ignorance about how one might evaluate technological progress. At the same time, it does nicely demonstrate why venture capitalists are responsible for so few of the innovations that come to market. Perhaps Thiel could grasp the potential of Paypal and Facebook earlier than some, but there are many other areas of technological potential that are apparently quite opaque to him.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Republican presidential candidate and cheerleader for corporate corruption (but I repeat myself) Herman Cain thinks that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are just "jealous" and "envious" of those hard working banksters and stockbrokers who helped engineer the financial collapse of 2008 and the current, on-going recession -- the worst one since the Great Depression (also caused by Wall Street). To wit, he is quoted as saying, of the protesters, "I'm not sure I know why they're there. If they're there because they are jealous of Wall Street and bankers and people who have succeeded, then they're there for the wrong reasons. This country is based on people who achieve their dreams and work." Of course, if Cain is not sure why the protesters are there, he could ask them or do five minutes of research. Instead, he chooses to answer his own question instantly and speculate that they must just be "jealous" haters who don't want to "work" or "achieve their dreams".

There was a person that most Republicans claim to admire named Jesus (No, not that dude from Mexico) who also preached against excessive monetary greed and materialism. He spoke hundreds of times, in the Gospels, about helping the poor and/or of the spiritual dangers of excess materialism and the greed that often comes with it. Of the Seven Deadly Sins, GREED (or avaritia) is often listed as the second one. Yes, it's called a sin, not a virtue, contrary to the mantra of false prophet Ronald Reagan who thought "Greed is Good". The ridiculous revisionism of the Prosperity Gospels to one side, Jesus did not speak very approvingly of the Rich. I know that Cain and Romney would label it "class warfare" today, but Jesus was quoted by Matthew as saying, " I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Mt 19:24). He said, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal." (Mt 6:19-20). He said, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." (Lk 18:22).

Jesus didn't say that he's not sure why the poor are here but that they are probably just "jealous" and "lazy". I know that Herman Cain claims to be a Christian, so the idea that he cannot understand why other people would be critical of the excesses of the wealthy is hard to reconcile. I know you're probably not sure why Jesus drove the money changers out of the Temple, Herman. However, I am pretty sure that it wasn't because Jesus was JEALOUS of their success or wanted to penalize them for "working hard" or that he wanted to redistribute their profits to the poor.

To take a page out of his playbook, I'm not sure why Cain dislikes these protesters and favors the plutocrats of Wallstreet. If it's because he hates Jesus and is in league with Satan, having sold his soul to serve Mammon and corporate greed, betraying the interests of the people, then that sounds pretty anti-American and anti-Christian to me.

Now Steve can finally find out if all that eastern mysticism and "spiritual" mumbo jumbo of his really has anything to it. I tend to think, like another Steve, with the last name Hawking, that "there is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers" and likewise, none for broken humans. Death, like Epicurus argued, is the end, but "fear not death for it is painless". When it is, you are no more. There is no you to worry about such things and all your burdens can finally be laid to rest. So long Steve, and thanks for all the apples.

Multiple news sources have confirmed that empty-headed, self-obsessed, wannabe religious dictator Sarah Palin will not be running for the GOP nomination for President of the United States in 2012. She claims that it was after numerous prayer conversations with God that she determined this. However, it also appears to be after numerous opinion polls showed that she didn't have a chance in hell of obtaining the nomination. She claims she wants to be with her family, but then instantly disproves her claim by saying that she will be campaigning for other candidates for the House, Senate, and Whitehouse. If she is still going to be on the campaign trail for all these individuals then this will certainly not give her the kind of quality family time that she, along with every politician, uses as the blanket excuse for dropping out an office or an election. Your lies make baby Jebus cry, Sarah. So does your shrill voice. It makes us all cry. Oh, and nobody wants your "help" stumping for them anyway, toots. You're a liability who guaranteed defeat for McCain (though he was losing without her anyway) and you can't even get a nomination from your party anymore. So the idea that you're some kind of political "kingmaker" is remarkably stupid, even for someone of your low intellectual caliber. When even the Teabaggers have fallen out of love with you and have stopped ogling your chest topography then you should know it's time to move on. That was the only real asset you had, but like your reputation, it's starting to sag.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Amanda Knox has been acquitted of murder and freed from prison. Expect religious fanatics, and evangelicals to freak out momentarily. Extremist Christian whack jobs have long tried to vilify Amanda Knox, and her trial, more reminscent of a witch hunt than a careful examination of the evidence, produced the same kind of (in)justice one might expect of a religious inquisition. Many insisted that, in addition to being a sexually liberated woman, Knox was a Wiccan, and therefore, via the slippery slope of misconceptions, a "Witch", and a "Satanist". Of course, Wicca has nothing to do with Satanism, but one can't expect bible-thumping fanatics to care much for truth, or subtle distinctions. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before this rhetoric is trotted out again and rehashed ad nauseum. Throughout the 1980's religious extremists in the US fomented similar "Satanic Panics" as with the McMartin Preschool case, where increasingly ridiculous testimonies were solicited from or falsely suggested to young children. In the end, people were wrongly convicted of "satanic ritual abuse", until the fraud of the whole system was revealed. When religious people get ahold of the justice system you can expect it to be anything but just to anyone who does not think like they do.